Metrics for Evaluating and Improving Community Resilience

1 Metrics for Evaluating and ImprovingCommunity ResilienceChloe Johansen1; Jennifer Horney, ; and Iris Tien, , :The growing risk of natural and artificial or manufactured hazards combined with a lack of Community preparedness haverevealed the necessity for comprehensive and effective Metrics for Evaluating and Improving a Community s Resilience , , the ability ofcommunities to prepare for, withstand, and recover from disasters. In this paper, the authors review existing Community Resilience metricsand tools, classifying them into one of three main categories: Community -level, sector-specific, or sociological. The paper provides shortdescriptions of each metric and comparisons across Metrics within the three main categories and across classes. The authors assess thestrengths and limitations of these Metrics , discuss challenges in Improving Community Resilience , and provide recommendations forthe development of new measures of Resilience . The paper concludes with an outlook on the future of Community Resilience , particularlythe need for Metrics that apply across hazards, geographic areas, and factors affecting Resilience .

2 The authors propose that effective metricsare characterized by: breadth, measures that address Community Resilience comprehensively; utility, measures that are able to be utilizedby the relevant entities to undertake actions to improve Resilience ; and scientific merit, measures that are scientifically validated throughstatistical methods, case studies, and (ASCE) 2016 American Society of Resilience is defined asthe ability of groups or com-munities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a resultof social, political, and environmental change(Adger 2000). Itlinks the adaptive capacities of a Community to its responses andchanges after disruptions (Cutter et al. 2010). Rather than waitingfor the next disaster to occur, a resilient Community anticipates fu-ture disasters and is able to prepare for and recover from adverseevents more effectively and efficiently by investing in Resilience (NRC 2012). Enhanced Resilience is essential to an increasing num-ber of individuals and communities as they face the challengeof living more safely and sustainably in areas vulnerable notonly to natural disasters, but also the effects of climate change(NRC 2014;NOAA 2014;Association of Public and Land-GrantUniversities 2014).

3 Historically, most cities have been designed without resiliencein mind, and therefore have inadequate performance and construction requirements are focused on preventingloss of life and ignore the possible range of building damage statesafter a disaster and measures of postdisaster usability. In addition,for existing structures, little action is being taken to rehabilitateolder structures that were built without disaster-resistant designand that are often the most vulnerable to damage. Currently, noconsistent approach exists that is aimed at providing, maintaining,and restoring necessary systems for recovery after disasters (SPUR2009). Additionally, many infrastructure components are notcurrently operating as designed. The American Society of CivilEngineers gave America s infrastructure aD on the 2013 ReportCard for America s Infrastructure (2013 Report Card for America sInfrastructure Advisory Council ofASCE 2013). Impacts ofdisasters on communities span economic, environmental, health,and well-being effects.

4 Disaster-related events caused $380 billionof financial loss in 2011 (Munich 2012), and these costs are in-creasing (Kunreuther and Michel-Kerjan 2009). Disasters led to theloss of 30,733 lives and affected million people in 2011(Guha-Sapir et al. 2012). In the coming years, because of climatechange, the intensity of natural disasters is expected to grow (Boinand McConnell 2007), further increasing the potential negativeimpacts of disasters on date, much of the research on the impacts of disasters hasconsisted of case studies of single disasters in one geographic lo-cation (Peacock et al. 2011) and most studies in disaster researchfocus on only one attribute of the complex systems that contributeto Resilience (NRC 2006). Metrics are necessary to assess the abilityof a Community to withstand and recover from all types of disas-ters, to compare across communities, to assess potential outcomesacross different strategies for Improving Resilience , and to quantifyany improvements in a Community s Resilience .

5 Resilience metricshave been created to decrease the vulnerability of communities,speed up recovery, and protect citizens from life-threatening physi-cal harm (OSSPAC 2013). They are necessary to educate commun-ities on the spectrum of threats they face, disseminate knowledgefrom previous events to communities who want to take action,address increasingly constrained resources, and diversify thestakeholders involved in a Community s Resilience (CRSI 2011). Metrics enable cities to determine their Community s baseline andto monitor their improvements over time (UNISDR 2012). Manyresilience Metrics identify specific areas in which a communitycan improve to increase adaptability and Resilience to disasters(Sempier et al. 2010). To achieve a successful Community Student, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering,Georgia Institute of Technology, 790 Atlantic Dr. NW, Atlanta,GA 30332 (corresponding author). E-mail: Professor, School of Public Health, Texas A&M Univ.,1266 TAMU, 214 Administrative, College Station, TX 77843.

6 Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering,Georgia Institute of Technology, 790 Atlantic Dr. NW, Atlanta,GA 30332. E-mail: This manuscript was submitted on August 14, 2015; approvedon June 21, 2016; published online on August 5, 2016. Discussion periodopen until January 5, 2017; separate discussions must be submitted forindividual papers. This paper is part of theJournal of InfrastructureSystems, ASCE, ISSN 1076-0342. ASCE04016032-1J. Infrastruct. Syst. J. Infrastruct. Syst., 04016032 Downloaded from by Georgia Tech Library on 10/01/16. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights , stakeholders in the Community must be involved and knowl-edgeable about the potential consequences the Community couldface and the measures that they can take to decrease them. There-fore, many Resilience Metrics involve a component of communicat-ing with the Community . This can range from educating students toalerting entire communities of an impending hazard. The overallgoal is to create resilient communities where critical networks canregain operation shortly after a disaster, people are protected andcan stay in their homes, and the Community can return to anewnormal within several years (SPUR 2009).

7 In accordance with this goal, many measures of Resilience havebeen proposed and developed in recent years. These include bothgeneralized Metrics and Resilience tools. The tools have their ownmethods of rating Resilience of a Community , so are included inthe assessment of Metrics in this paper. The authors classify thesemetrics into one of three main categories: Community -level, sector-specific, and sociological Metrics . In this paper, the authors providea detailed summary review of the current state of the methods usedto measure and improve Community Resilience . The Metrics wereselected by a comprehensive search of measures that are used orhave been developed and proposed for assessing Community resil-ience. Many of the Metrics referred to were validated based on casestudies and implementation in the communities that they paper serves as an overview of existing methods and providesdescriptions of specific Metrics that a Community may choose touse based on its particular characteristics.

8 The authors provide eval-uations and comparisons across Metrics and describe the compo-nents of effective Resilience Metrics such that the paper can also beused as a basis for the development of new, potentially standard-ized, Metrics . The rest of the paper is organized as follows: First, Community -level, sector-specific, and sociological measures ofresilience are discussed. Next, the authors provide a summary of re-silience Metrics across categories, including limitations of existingmetrics and challenges in Improving Community Resilience . Theauthors then discuss recommendations for the development of newmetrics before concluding with an outlook on the future of com-munity Resilience MetricsAlthough the importance of Resilience may be readily recognizedafter a disaster, the benefits of improved Resilience are rarely ac-knowledged or prioritized before a disaster takes place, makingthe benefits of predisaster Resilience actions challenging for com-munities to demonstrate. Community -level Metrics are one way todocument these actions as well as potential returns on Communityapproach of the Federal Emergency Man-agement Agency (FEMA) enables communities to have agencyinvolvement in their disaster response, and be able to rely ontheir own assets to fund recovery, rather than depending on re-sources from the federal government, which may be insufficientor delayed in arriving (FEMA 2011).

9 When disasters occur, com-munities often turn to nongovernmental agencies and privatecompanies to acquire needed resources (Eisenman et al. 2014). Community -level plans can serve as the blueprint for the assetsthat are needed from these organizations and recommend howthese resources should be distributed. By understanding potentialimpacts of disasters and ways to improve Resilience , communitiescan specify their needs to other organizations, align their in-centives, and create successful partnerships (Chen et al. 2013). Community -level Resilience plans enable individual communitiesto assess, measure, and improve their Resilience to threats and dis-ruptions (CARRI 2015).MetricsTable1provides a summary of Community -level Resilience met-rics. This includes: a framework by the Community and RegionalResilience Institute (CARRI) (CARRI 2015); Characteristics ofa Safe and Resilient Community developed by the InternationalFederation of the Red Cross along with Arup s International De-velopment team (Arup International Development 2011); Arup andthe Rockefeller Foundation s City Resilience Index (Arup 2014);the Coastal Resilience Index, a Community self-assessment tool tounderstand a Community s preparation for disaster (Sempier et ); the Environmental Vulnerability Index, a report card foreach country assessed, which classifies vulnerability based on50 indicators (SOPAC et al.)

10 2005); the Flood Resilience Checklistdeveloped by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)(EPA 2014); Getting to Resilience , an online tool that allows a com-munity to visualize exposure to current and future hazards (NRCCI2015); Hazus-MH, a tool created by FEMA to estimate potentiallosses from disasters (FEMA 2008); a monitoring and evalua-tion framework created by the Recovery Sub-Committee of theAustralia and New Zealand Emergency Management to take recov-ery support and intervention by all levels of the government intoaccount (Council of Australian Governments 2014); the NationalResilience Scorecard, a Community Resilience metric that is in de-velopment by the National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST) (NIST 2015); the New Orleans Index used to track therecovery of the city using economic growth, inclusion, quality oflife, and sustainability indicators (Plyer et al. 2013); the OregonResilience Plan developed by the Oregon Seismic Safety PolicyAdvisory Commission (OSSPAC) with the goal of reducing riskand Improving recovery from future Cascadia seismic events(OSSPAC 2013); the San Francisco Planning Urban ResearchAssociation metric for the Community (SPUR 2009); the UnitedNations ( ) Disaster Resilience Scorecard based on the UnitedInternational Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction s (UNISDR s)Ten Essentialsof disaster management (UNISDR 2012); and theVulnerability- Resilience Indicators Model developed for the of Energy to assess the significance of potential futurechanges in climate for natural resources and socioeconomic sys-tems (Moss et al.